240. Montana Club Cocktail

This dry, brandy-based cocktail first appears in JM 1908 and continues pretty much without change to the end. In 1908, he calls for a large bar glass half full of ice. This peculiar instruction may indicate a borrowing. Also specified there is “California Brandy.” That is, rather than French brandy (cognac). A similar cocktail in Straub called simply the “Montana Cocktail” adds 2 dashes of Angostura bitters and 2 dashes of port, specifies shaking, and leaves out the olive; still, the brandy + dry vermouth + anisette combination is enough to relate it, whereas the recipe of the same name in the 1927 Barflies & Cocktails book shares only the french vermouth and anisette, with Sloe Gin as the base, to which orange bitters are added, and a squeeze of lemon peel as a bonus. If one were charitable, one might be tempted to see the sloe gin as a good guess for the brandy + port. Another recipe found in the Old Waldorf Bar Book, a later iteration of the earlier source of many New York recipe collections, serves as an elucidator: Simply equal portions of Brandy, French Vermouth, and Port Wine, stirred. It is there called “a compliment to the field of operations of many early patrons of the Bar.” Obviously the recipes are related, though an explanation for the disparity between anisette and port is still wanting.